


Hopes and Dreams

by eastern_wind



Series: Shadows of the Past [4]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Or Is It?, POV Solas, Present Tense, everything is not real, so no shmoop here, solas is delusional, the darkest hour prompts month, the shmoop is only mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 03:51:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15525438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eastern_wind/pseuds/eastern_wind
Summary: Breathing is hard. Dreams of her are thousand times harder.





	Hopes and Dreams

“You are careless,” she chides me and her cold fingers trace the lines on my face again. She is all light and snow, white hair and pale skin that stands out even more when she touches me. I am no equal to her, darkness to her light, marked by her brother, a liar and a sinner to her grace and deadly elegance.

“I would die for you,” and I swear I would, even if it breaks my soul forever, never letting it to return to a living body. I would become a spirit for her to bind me in a blink of her emerald eyes if it means I can never leave again.

She laughs huskily and presses her chapped lips to my forehead. I cling to this not-kiss, try desperately to pull every ounce of my bound magic to save this feeling. I pray to her for this to never end and as pain sears through me, I am ready to die.

“He’s not your master anymore,” I hear through the haze and this must be a dream. There’s salt on her skin when our lips meet for the first time and I don’t know how to breathe. My magic twirls around us, unbound and unbent until she whispers “you are free” and I pour my whole being into loving her. No chains can stop us now. 

I have almost forgotten how it felt to be hers, not tied by blood and ink, but joined by it. The room flickers around us, but I turn away and to her, mesmerised by how our bodies fit together, bright and dark, day and night, truth and lies. Is this all a dream? I hope it isn’t.

 

I wake from my slumber with the first ray of dawn. A burst of heat in slow humid air, it breaks through the thick canopy of tropical forest and blinds me for a moment with its sheer intensity. Damp, loud and green, this small island my companions call Abankata is a stark contrast from the home I remember. There is no cities in the sky, once vibrant and ethereal, no steady thrum of magic in the air. It is all lost now. Was it I who had caused this?

We left for this place three months ago, crossed the lands called Free Marches, Antiva and Rivain, constantly slipping away from other clans and humans. How can I believe all this is real if instead of my kin the world is crawling with impostors now? Dalish, they say proudly, the Keepers of old ways. Humans don’t even have that excuse, they just come and take whatever pleases them and watch the world crash and burn at their feet. Vermin. 

The travel should have made me forget about the loss, made me think about the goal I’ve set ages ago, the sole purpose that pushes me forward, but rising temperature and the smell of salt in sea air only clings to my lungs like wet cotton wool. Breathing is hard. Dreams of her are thousand times harder.

“Hahren?” His voice is still rough from sleep, but Revas is already offering me a water bottle, his long white as snow hair lying in a cloud of tangled mess on his shoulders. Short, thin and all too pale at his thirty something, he is a shadow of what we once had been, an elf, but not elvhen. His sister though… No. I shake my head and leave the camp to watch the waves ebb away from the shore in solitude. 

 

“Make no promises,” she says and slips away from my grasp with the gust of cold winter wind. With every passing day it becomes harder and harder to remember her face, the curve of her spine under layers and layers of my protective spells woven into her simple tunic, the scent of yew following her everywhere she goes. Went. Not anymore.

 

The foci calls out for me in thousands of voices. An orb the size of my palm has been buried in the sand of the island in the middle of nowhere for centuries, keeping the power of my kin within it. Sealed by evanuris, the best of her kind, it burns my fingertips the moment I touch the lines etched in its copper surface. They has gone teal with time. I gather it safely in my palms, ignoring the way it melts my flesh, because it’s hers. The last piece of her greatness.

I have no strength to open it myself, it comes as no surprise. Three months since my uthenera was broken, even the smallest, the easiest spells backfire at me with the power of raging storm. This world cannot accept such intricate magic anymore, not from me. I am too old for this. I am the only one left.

 

“No regrets,” she whispers and her lips are smeared with blood. It hides all familiar frown and a sharp chin, drips on her once white tunic, colors it crimson. I want to scream, to reach out, to heal her wounds, but the wind comes and she disappears again. Grass green of her eyes dissolves in the waters of Fade without a trace. I don’t remember her face anymore.

I will destroy her killers.

 

I lead Sulahn’nan to the place I once called my own, to teach them, make them see the truth and they follow. Years pass as we return to Free Marches, cross Nevarra through long overgrown roads to enter Tevinter. I follow the Fade, see elf and human empires rise and fall, read the shadows of footsteps left by men that wanted to become gods until I finally find him. 

Or it. The thing has only slightest resemblance to a living person, but it has enough power to open the foci and make what I have planned true. She would hate me were she alive.

 

The light, green as her eyes, and vengeful as her spirit, splits the world asunder and I watch it crumble. The pain never ceases and the Veil stays. She doesn’t come to me in my sleep anymore.

I ruined everything.

 

This all is a dream. It must be.


End file.
